Singapore’s LOCUST Model
How a state-held control layer, not an airframe, carries Singapore’s claim to sovereign swarm capability
On 3 July 2026 the Defence Science and Technology Agency recorded that a team drawn from its Land Systems Programme Centre and C3 Development had adapted drone lightshow technology to enable a single soldier to control up to 200 drones, and had integrated commercial technologies into DSTA’s in-house Robotics Command, Control and Communications system to deliver a cohesive sense-strike capability for the Singapore Army. The system is Low-Cost Unmanned Sense-Strike Technology, or LOCUST. Two further magnitudes set the scale. At Exercise Wallaby 2025, the largest overseas unilateral exercise the Singapore Armed Forces conduct, DSTA trialled LOCUST by name alongside a fifty-drone swarm, within a campaign of more than twenty new technology applications and an exercise of over 5,000 personnel and over 500 platforms. Against that, projected defence expenditure for the 2025 financial year was about S$23.4 billion, a 12.4 per cent increase on the preceding year, held within a decade-long band of roughly 3 per cent of gross domestic product. The structural constraint is that Singapore must generate mass and redundancy without surrendering control of the systems that make mass usable, in a market where the platforms themselves turn over faster than any procurement cycle. The question the disclosed record leaves open is where the boundary of that control actually runs.
The report proceeds in four sections. The first sets out the strategic and institutional architecture, working from the 2026 Committee of Supply speech of Minister for Defence Chan Chun Sing, the June 2021 fact sheet on the transformation of the Singapore Army, the October 2022 establishment of the Digital and Intelligence Service, and DSTA’s own accounts of the Robotics C3 family from June 2022 to April 2026. The second examines legal, budgetary, programme and procurement mechanics, working from the Defence Science and Technology Agency Act 2000, the MINDEF and DSTA statements of procurement policy and their GeBIZ publication thresholds, the 2025 Committee of Supply speech of Dr Ng Eng Hen, and the July 2024 revision by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore of the rules governing unmanned-aircraft light shows. The third examines industrial, technological and corporate structure, working from DSTA’s Exercise Wallaby account of October 2025, its April 2026 showcase at 6th Singapore Division, its announced partnerships with Shield AI, Icarus Swarms and Mistral, and the officially disclosed participants in the VELOCE 15 programme. The fourth draws the decision-relevant implications for European ministries and agencies. The report does not identify LOCUST’s suppliers, does not assert that a procurement has or has not taken place, and does not value any company or indicate any position.